Sat Ma­haraj

Hin­duism has al­ways re­lied on its rit­u­als to in­volve its devo­tees who fo­cus more on fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty. Phi­los­o­phy and ab­stract de­bates about God are left to few in­tel­lec­tu­als.

In a re­cent cel­e­bra­tion of Swa­mi Vivekanan­da, the High Com­mis­sion­er of In­dia to Port-of-Spain made some in­cor­rect state­ments about the spread of Hin­duism in the West­ern world and its prac­tice in T&T. In­dia is a sec­u­lar state and we fail to ap­pre­ci­ate Mr Malay Mishra's shal­low un­der­stand­ing of Hin­duism.

Swa­mi Vivekanan­da did not bring Hin­duism to the West when he spoke at the world con­fer­ence of re­li­gions in Chica­go, USA in 1893. Hin­duism was in­tro­duced to Guyana in 1838 with the ar­rival of in­den­tured im­mi­grants and in 1845, the SS Fa­tel Rozac brought its first con­tin­gent of Hin­dus to T&T.

This diplo­mat is re­port­ed to have said, "What I have seen is too much em­pha­sis on rit­u­al­ism, the rit­u­al part of it. And some­times with very shal­low un­der­stand­ing of the phi­los­o­phy of the re­li­gion. "And I stress this point be­cause a lot of con­fu­sion and er­ror have crept in­to un­der­stand­ing this re­li­gion not on­ly in In­dia but in Trinidad and To­ba­go among the so-called priests and pun­dits of this coun­try about what Hin­duism re­al­ly amounts to," he said.

Dr Shankar Day­al Shar­ma, a de­ceased pres­i­dent of In­dia, vis­it­ed T&T in 1995 dur­ing our 150 an­niver­sary of the ar­rival of in­den­tured im­mi­grants from In­dia. Dr Shar­ma was al­so a top in­tel­lec­tu­al of In­dia and he pro­duced a com­pi­la­tion of his var­i­ous con­vo­ca­tion ad­dress­es de­liv­ered at uni­ver­si­ties in In­dia.

These have been com­piled in his pub­li­ca­tion Hori­zons of In­di­an Ed­u­ca­tion. In one of his pre­sen­ta­tions at Put­ta­parthy, on No­vem­ber 22, 1987, he said, "The more we study the more we dis­cov­er our ig­no­rance. Most of our saints and schol­ars of the past did not re­ceive any for­mal ed­u­ca­tion. Even with­in our liv­ing mem­o­ry, one of the finest prod­ucts of the uni­ver­si­ty, Swa­mi Vivekanan­da, had to sit and learn at the feet of an il­lit­er­ate mas­ter, Shri Ra­makr­ish­na Pharma­ham­sa."

And Swa­mi Vivekanan­da him­self said of his il­lit­er­ate Gu­ru, "Ra­makr­ish­na looked just like an or­di­nary man, with noth­ing re­mark­able about him. He used the most sim­ple lan­guage and I thought, 'Can this man be a great teacher?' I crept near to him and asked him the ques­tion which I had been ask­ing oth­ers all my life: 'Do you be­lieve in God, sir?'

'Yes', he replied. 'Can you prove it, sir?' 'Yes'. 'How?' 'Be­cause I see Him just as I see you here, on­ly in a much in­tenser sense.' That im­pressed me at once. I be­gan to go to that man day af­ter day, and I ac­tu­al­ly saw that re­li­gion could be giv­en. One touch, one glance can change a whole life."

His Ex­cel­len­cy Malay Mishra should en­grave on his mind these words of Swa­mi Vivekanan­da: "One touch, one glance can change a whole life."

The most pow­er­ful Hin­du in the world to­day, Ashok Sing­hal, is a re­tired sec­re­tary and now pa­tron of the Vish­wa Hin­du Prashad (World Hin­du Or­ga­ni­za­tion) head­quar­tered at Sankat Mochan in New Del­hi In­dia. Af­ter at­tend­ing the World Hin­du Or­ga­ni­za­tion Con­fer­ence in Cal­i­for­nia in Sep­tem­ber last year, Sing­hal vis­it­ed T&T and spent five days with us. On his re­turn to In­dia he wrote the fol­low­ing let­ter:

"Aadarani­iya Sri Sat Ma­haraj Ji, Jai Sri Ram! Pray you are do­ing well! It was on­ly your stand­ing in­vi­ta­tion that brought me to Trinidad and To­ba­go. There was a sud­den re­cov­ery in my health and I felt that I could un­der­take the trip to Trinidad and To­ba­go in or­der to ful­fill my in­tense de­sire to meet you.

"You de­serve all sin­cere con­grat­u­la­tions for the for­mi­da­ble dash and push with which you have pre­served the Hin­du iden­ti­ty in T&T through the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The SDMS has cre­at­ed a very good task force of pun­dits con­ver­sant with Hin­du rit­u­als and vang­may which is why the tem­ples there have been suc­cess­ful in unit­ing as well as or­gan­is­ing the Hin­du so­ci­ety.

"The pride of Hin­dut­va ev­i­dent in the so­ci­ety there was the con­tri­bu­tion of the school ed­u­ca­tion and tem­ple-cen­tric ac­tiv­i­ties of Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha of T&T. "The en­tire Hin­du so­ci­ety of T&T has been for­tu­nate to have a for­mi­da­ble, com­pe­tent and pro­fi­cient lead­er­ship in your per­son­al­i­ty who is en­dowed with a unique na­ture to take a cri­sis by its horns, main­tain con­sis­ten­cy and fo­cus and nev­er take things ly­ing down.

"You took me to the Jagri­ti ra­dio sta­tion. The task of prop­a­ga­tion of the Hin­du world view that you have tak­en up through the IT me­dia and your ef­forts for es­tab­lish­ing a TV chan­nel, will be able to ad­dress many a prob­lem of the Hin­du so­ci­ety and build a right mind­set.

"Please con­vey my Na­maskars to the Pan­dit Parishad Chair­man Sri Sita­hal who con­duct­ed the main pro­gramme. Please al­so con­vey my con­grat­u­la­tions to the Chair­man of SDMS, Sri Ut­tam Ma­haraj Ji, Sri Lokeshji, Sri Vyasji and Sri Dhar­mad­hikar­i­ji." The VHP and its of­fi­cers across the world are the ex­pert au­thor­i­ties on Hin­duism and its pun­dits–not Mr Malay Mishra.

Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha